People with Autism: Public Building Access

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on securing this debate and on her passionate and inspiring contribution. I agree that quiet spaces and logical ways through the parliamentary estate would benefit us all.

We all aim for an inclusive society, and public places should be for all the public. It is great that 1,000 spaces are now autism-friendly, but that raises the question of how many are not. We have heard some worrying statistics. Some 79% of people with autism and their families feel socially isolated. Last week, I went to a Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness reception at No. 10, where there were many comments about social isolation and loneliness. People mentioned old people and young mums, but there was no mention of autism. I encourage the Government to add people with autism and their families to the strategy and to build them into it.

As we have heard from many Members, these changes can help other people, too. I often think about my mum who, as she got older, did not like going into crowded places with music because she could not hear the conversation over it. Simple adjustments will help many people.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned many things from Northern Ireland. We can learn from across the UK, because there are people with autism in every part of the United Kingdom. The Labour party recognised that isolation and the need to include everyone in society. Our last manifesto had the specific objective of making the whole country autism-friendly. As we heard from the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson), many of the physical adjustments will not be major ones—a lot of it is to do with awareness.

The hon. Member for Strangford talked about children staring and telling them not to. Children will stare, but would it not be great if their parents could explain, “Yes, these people are different, but differences are what makes the world go round”? Being different is not bad, and that is the key point. It is about getting the awareness so that while people may stare, they will react differently and say, “That person is just different.”

Some councils and areas are working towards making autism-friendly cities a reality. Liverpool has the ambition of becoming the UK’s first autism-friendly city. It is working with businesses and cultural spaces, raising awareness of the condition and celebrating the achievements of those living with autism. There was an exhibition at the Tate of artwork by people with autism recently, and I think that is a brilliant idea. We should celebrate people’s differences and not define them specifically by the characteristic.

In the same way that someone in a wheelchair is not defined by their wheelchair, someone with autism is not defined by their autism. They have different needs—the same as the rest of us. However, their condition means that reasonable adjustments should be made, and the Equality Act 2010 applies. Will the Minister commit to raising awareness among businesses and those who own and operate public spaces of their duties to all under that Act? Too often, we hear, “We are wheelchair-accessible”, and that is simply not good enough any more. An autism-friendly city should enable those with autism confidently to access community infrastructure such as shopping centres, tourist attractions and public transport. There is a wealth of information on the noise and the sensory overload of public transport systems, so perhaps we should consider how we can change that.

I want to mention my local authority, Wigan. It has autism champions at the business expo event to talk to businesses and raise awareness of people with autism as customers and employees. Those champions show that only very minor adjustments are needed and that people with autism can be excellent employees. If businesses rule out those people without thinking about it, they are missing out.

This week, we have had a number of events raising awareness of autism, and that is to be celebrated, but words are not enough, just as it is not enough to have an autism hour and then forget about it the rest of the time. We need action to ensure a fully inclusive society and environment. The wonderful example of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West and her autism-friendly surgery will make many of us think about what we are doing to ensure a truly inclusive Parliament and a democracy in which all can take part.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

If the Minister could allow a couple of minutes at the end for the mover of the debate to come back, that would be helpful.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

As my hon. Friend will know, we had an overwhelming number of applications for the pilot, and I am disappointed for him that Somerset is not a member. He should encourage his local authority to apply again when we rerun the pilot this year. In the meantime, I would be delighted to meet him to discuss fair funding for Somerset.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

The local government finance settlement descended into a complete and utter shambles last week. The figures sent to local authorities were wrong. Back in March 2017, the National Audit Office was concerned that there was not the capacity within the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Valuation Office Agency to handle the Secretary of State’s plans. This new error will certainly not engender confidence in the Department. What steps are being taken to ensure that the error is not repeated?

[Rishi Sunak]

The Valuation Office Agency made a mistake with the initial calculations. That was corrected and the Department has moved swiftly to provide accurate information to local authorities. I gently point out that overall the error meant that local authorities will receive an increase in the business rates retention forecast for this year.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

The last time we were able to question the Secretary of State, we asked how he planned to address the unsustainable and insufficient funding for children’s services and what he would do about the £2 billion funding gap. He told us to wait and see what happened in the local government finance settlement. Well, we waited and looked at his proposal, but there is no new money for these vital services. Was that another error, and will it be corrected in future?

[Rishi Sunak]

As I have already mentioned, local authorities will receive a real-terms increase in their aggregate funding this year and next. The Government have also invested £200 million in a social care innovation programme to look at ways to improve the delivery of children’s social services.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It is indeed a privilege to speak in this debate, because I believe it shows the best of this House when we come together in a common cause. I thank the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for securing the debate and for his powerful speech, and hon. Members on both sides of the House for their powerful contributions. I am sorry that I do not have the time to pay tribute to all those who have spoken, but I must mention my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who did indeed demonstrate the power of words, however difficult it must have been for him to share that story. I am so pleased that, with all-party support, this debate is a fixture in the calendar. It is not, however, just a fixture or something we do by rote; it is there to remind us of the horrors of the past and for us to look forward to the future. Sadly, this year, it is needed more than ever.

The power of words in this place is well recognised—sometimes, too many words—so it is an appropriate theme for Holocaust Memorial Day. I thank the Holocaust Educational Trust for all its work and for deciding on this as its theme. I have visited Dachau and I have visited the Washington Holocaust museum, and it is ironic that words could not describe the experience we had going round them. I have never been to a place where there was complete silence as people viewed and experienced everything there. That was particularly the case in Washington, where visitors are given a card with a name on, and when they come out at the end they are told whether they have survived—and, sadly, nearly everyone does not survive the experience. It took a good 10 minutes for us even to speak after that experience.

We are grateful to the survivors because they speak about their experiences and, however hard it is for them to do so, they tell us what it was like for them and their families. They are not just nameless and faceless victims, and they are not just 6 million; they are people with families—they were brothers, sisters, mums, dads. In a time with fewer survivors, we have to ensure that their words and their experiences live on and are communicated to future generations. As Anne Frank wrote, the words in her diary were a way of living on; she did not know that they would be her only way of living on.

We have to remember that words can be a force for good as well as a force for evil. Sadly, on this Holocaust Memorial Day, we are reminded that anti-Semitism and hate speech are no longer just in the past. As a child, I was told, as I am sure many people were told, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” but words do hurt: they are the start of hurting people. They are the start of stereotyping, name calling and vilification, which dehumanises people. Sadly, this is still happening today, possibly facilitated by social media, which allows people to say things anonymously that they would never say to somebody’s face.

I am very sorry that colleagues and others on both sides of the House have suffered some of this vilification. They should report it, and it the duty of all of us to support them if they are suffering from this vilification. It is our duty to call out, and to support others in calling out, anti-Semitism and hate speech wherever it is found. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said, we cannot stand idly by. To stand idly by is to give tacit support to those who hate. Holocaust Memorial Day is not just to look back on a period of history; it is to reflect on how this happened. It is to reflect on how ordinary people were divided against each other and could commit dreadful atrocities on another human being, because words had told them that those others were not human beings, that they were a different race and culture and that that was bad. Such things are not bad: differences should be celebrated, not vilified. It is our duty to show that we can reflect and look forward and to demonstrate by our actions and our words that we will not stand idly and silently by.